Income Inequality Visualized on Map of NYC

scalesofwealth.jpg
TK
Pretty cool: a map that visualizes income inequality using Manhattan as a scale. This appeared on the third issue of n+1's Occupy! gazette. Maria Popova has an explanation:

The graphic is inspired by the familiar scales of the universe maps, plotting the relative distances between planetary bodies onto a local map that encourages an embodied understanding of celestial distances by walking local routes. Kelli transposed income inequalities using Wall Street Journal data onto the geography of New York City itself. Zuccotti Park, the center of the map, represents the income of the average wage-earner. Other percentiles' average incomes -- of the top 1%, the top 10%, the top 50% -- appear longitudinally from there, with the bottom-earners (the bottom 0.01%) falling somewhere around Red Hook Battlefields and the highest earners (the top 0.01%) bleeding off the map, almost into the Arctic Circle, in Canada's Prince Edward Island. Walking from Zuccotti park, or the average person's income, to the bottom of the income scale will cost you a couple of hours, and trekking to the very top of the scale would take more than 18 days of continuous walking -- a powerful manifestation of just how imbalanced and skewed our wealth scale is.

The version above might be hard to read; if so, click through to this version.

[rgray@villagevoice.com] [@_rosiegray]

Go to Runnin' Scared for more Voice news coverage.

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